Empirical Progress and Nomic Truth Approximation by the ‘Hypothetico-Probabilistic Method’

Abstract

Three related intuitions are explicated in this chapter. The first is the idea that there must be some kind of probabilistic version of the HD-method, a ‘Hypothetico-Probabilistic (HP-) method’, in terms of something like probabilistic consequences, instead of deductive consequences. According to the second intuition, the comparative application of this method should also be functional for some probabilistic kind of empirical progress, and according to the third intuition this should be functional for something like probabilistic truth approximation. In all three cases, the guiding idea is to explicate these intuitions by explicating the crucial notions as appropriate ‘concretizations’ of their basic or deductive analogues, being ‘idealizations’.

It turns out that the comparative version of the proposed HP-method amounts to a sophisticated likelihood ratio success (SLRS-) method applied to the cumulated evidence. This method turns out to be not only functional for probabilistic empirical progress but also for probabilistic truth approximation. The latter is based on a probabilistic threshold theorem constituting for this reason the analogue of the deductive success theorem.

This chapter is in fact a supplement to Chap. 5. Despite some terminological deviation, there is substantial partial overlap to enable independent reading.

Strongly revised version of: “Empirical progress and Truth Approximation by the ‘Hypothetico-Probabilistic Method’”, Erkenntnis, 70.3, 2009, 313–330. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank for all the comments I got before and after writing in 2005 the preliminary paper (2007a) when presenting the ideas in Bielefeld (2003), Rotterdam (2004), Konstanz (2004), Trieste (2007), Amsterdam (2007), Leusden (2007) and in the PCCP research group in Groningen (2004, 2007). In particular I want to thank Igor Douven , Dale Jacquette , Jacek Malinowski , Elliott Sober , Ilkka Niiniluoto , Jan-Willem Romeijn , Jeanne Peijnenburg , and David Atkinson . I also like to thank the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Research (NIAS) in Wassenaar for the opportunity to spend in 2005 and 2007 two weeks on this and another paper. Finally, I like to thank two anonymous referees for their constructive questions.